Weird application menu behaviour

[Liam Proven]

On 8 February 2014 16:43, Jim Byrnes <jf_byrnes at comcast.net> wrote:

> If I had a netbook I might agree, but I don't. The system I use 90% of the
> time is a desktop with 2 wide screen monitors.  If I have a couple of small
> windows open at the bottom of one of them it makes no sense to me to have to
> mouse up to the upper left hand corner to access a menu.

I use 2 x 19" LCDs myself, but they're 4:3 ones. I still don't mind
it. The important thing is Fitt's Law: the top of the screen is an
infinitely large target. With mouse acceleration, an upward flick
*will* hit the top of the screen & thus the menus. You literally
/cannot miss./

A menu in a window is a very narrow target: it needs fine muscle
control & good coordination. This is harder.

This is pure biomechanics: although it's something people have been
getting shouty about since 1984 or so, it's not opinion, it's a matter
of simple, measurable, objective, scientific *fact*. Hitting a menu
bar requires lots of small muscles to work hard and very precisely
with small movements. Hitting a screen edge does not. Simple as that.

Obviously, once you've hit the menu bar, /then/ either type needs fine
muscle control to navigate the menu, but that is unavoidable with menu
systems. It's why touchscreen OSes (Android, iOS, Jolla, Blackberry
10) only have simple big simple menus with few options.

Personally, I use keyboard menu-control shortcuts a lot, so I don't
really care. It annoys me that these don't work on Mac OS X, or in
LibreOffice in Ubuntu.

> I haven't seen the global menu in action for a while but if I remember
> correctly the space savings is not much more than a single line on a
> spreadsheet.

Yes, it's not much. But if you don't have much space, a small saving
is good... As is a GUI which arranges things vertically (like the
Launcher) and *not* horizontally (like the taskbars in GNOME 3, Maté,
Cinnamon, KDE etc.)

-- 
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